Phoenix
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Darcy and Craig.
1. Chapter 1

Darcy was learning to separate her body from herself. It mattered what happened to it but she had to separate it to survive the rape. Purity and virginity had been so important to her and now it was just gone. But she wasn't gone. Her integrity wasn't gone.

She held her head higher at school, except when she ran into Emma Nelson. The girl had daggers for her and rightfully so. She'd so screwed Snake over. She'd lashed out and hurt a good man. But people get hurt. She was sorry.

Walking along the Toronto streets every day after school, hugging herself. It felt good to walk. To feel the breeze against her cheek. To be alone. She was piecing things back together.

Not looking where she was going most of the time, looking off at the lake, at the office buildings rising to the sky, the glass smooth and blue. At the park benches and grass, at the pigeons, at the school kids in uniforms running along, hearing their school shoes scrape the sidewalk.

She ran smack into someone and she looked up. She recognized this person but couldn't place him. He was tall, had an easy sexy smile, wide eyes.

"Sorry," she mumbled, hugging herself tighter, looking down.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it," The voice. The eyes. She got it. She had run smack into Craig Manning. He used to go to her school and live here.

"Are you Craig Manning?" she said, looking at him. She was pretty sure that he was.

"Yeah," he ducked his head and smiled.

"I…I thought so. I listen to that song…"My Window"…that song…I listen to it a lot," she said, feeling like an idiot. She listened to that song every day, liking something that was sad about it. It made her feel better.

"You do? Thanks. I mean, I'm glad you like it," She wouldn't look at him.

"You're Darcy, right?" he said gently, and she did look up at him, her eyes narrowed. She didn't think he knew who she was.

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"I knew you had dated Spinner and everything,"

"Oh," She was getting ready to bail. Craig Manning, that was cool. And he knew who she was. She thought of the "My Window" song and couldn't believe she was standing here chatting with the person who wrote it.

"Listen, I was just gonna go get something to eat at the Dot or somewhere. Want to join me?" he said, and her eyes widened.

"Join you? Uh, yeah. Sure. I'd like to," She berated herself for sounding like such an idiot fan girl but she couldn't help it. He had written that song, her crying herself to sleep song. Her anchor song. It was like meeting your favorite author or favorite actor or something so friggin' dorky like that.

They headed to the Dot and she was happy at finally feeling like she could get out of her head. Craig Manning was a nice distraction. She wished she could do something creative like that, like writing or singing or drawing, some activity that she could lose herself in.

"So, how are things going?" he said, their coffees in front of them, a boat of fries loaded with ketchup between them. Darcy knew she wouldn't eat any of the fries. Her stomach couldn't handle that grease.

Her face kind of crumbled at the question. It wasn't going very well. Maybe it was slowly getting better. Her eyes shimmered with tears and she looked down and mumbled, "okay,"


	2. Chapter 2

She watched him lick his fingers after eating the fries, thought about how those fingers plucked the guitar strings of that song. Such a sort of secretly longing song, and she'd close her eyes and listen to it late at night letting the tears fall down her cheeks. How wrong everything had gone, how disastrously wrong it had all gone.

He smiled and joked and laughed and she recognized that he was in a better place than she was. He was comfortable with himself, with what he was doing, where he was going. She had none of those things. She couldn't stand to be in her skin. She had no idea where she was anymore, no sense of going anywhere. She heard the insidious hiss of suicide more and more.

She didn't speak much, let him talk and she listened. She liked his voice, his speaking voice not that much different from how it sounded when he sang. She tilted her head, laughed sometimes, felt the laugh loosen something inside her that had become so tight.

"Hey," he said, and she looked up, sure he was going to say he had to go. She'd understand.

"Yeah?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Want to go somewhere with me? Right now?" he said, and she widened her eyes and nodded before he even said where. She'd rather go somewhere instead of home and to her bedroom walls that pressed in on her. At the view out of her window that didn't change. At the crumpled pillow and messy bedspread. At all her knick knacks and trinkets and pictures that didn't mean anything anymore.

"Okay, let's go," he said, standing up, and she stood up, too. She didn't know where she thought they were going to go but she didn't expect the zoo. She hadn't been here since she was little, and she could see that little girl. Skinny legs and bony knees, light brown pigtails, an easy happiness she had taken for granted. She felt that little girl looking at her with a sad puzzlement.

"The zoo?" she said, looking up at him. He was so tall. Broad shoulders, strong jaw, large eyes. He looked like a man, not a teenager. He looked like a teenager on the cover of the CD. Younger, sweeter almost, his bangs hanging straight and spiky across his forehead in the CD picture. She frowned. He sang that song, _her_ song, but she wasn't all that thrilled with men lately.

"Yeah. I love it here," he said, and they were walking by the monkey cages. The monkeys stuck their tongues out at them and she smiled a little.

"Animals are more honest. There's none of the duplicity," he said, and she squinted at the monkeys sitting in the knots of trees. He was right. These animals were just what they were, not all the complex smoke and mirrors and lies that made up everyone she knew.

"Do you like it…here?" he said, seeing the tears forming in her eyes again, and she blinked them back.

"Yeah, I do. It's great," she said. They kept going, past the red and green parrots, past the slow moving, dusty gray elephants, past the camels blinking their long black eyelashes and wondering where the sand had gone.

The sun started to set beyond the monkey cages, turning the sky all pink and blue, baby pastel colors. Darcy sat on the stone wall and couldn't hold back the tears anymore. She sobbed into her hands as Craig looked at her in alarm.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I hardly know you, and here I am falling apart. It's just that I can't help it, everything is shit. Everyone is shit, and it's been so nice being with you today…I don't know how to deal with being with people anymore, with having a good time, because, because…"

"Hey," he said, sitting next to her on the stone wall, "it's okay, shhhhhhh," he said, and hugged her. She stiffened at first but she had wanted someone's arms around her despite her aversion. She needed the contact and she relaxed against him.


	3. Chapter 3

Craig held the shaking, sobbing girl in his arms. Smoothed her hair back from her forehead, felt every muscle she had tense and loosen in turn. He looked over her head, across the animal cages and to the sky beyond. He'd always liked the zoo, especially when he had lived with his father. The animals were more honest, and they were in cages like he had been. Trapped. Darcy was trapped by something, too.

They sat there and her tears and sobs were tapering off. His shirt was wet from the tears, and it had been years since someone's tears had soaked his clothes. It was getting dark. He knew he should bring her home, but somehow he didn't want to. He liked how delicate she felt in his arms.

"How did you write it?" she said, and he heard the crying hitch in her voice.

"Write what?" he said, his voice soft, and he wasn't thinking of things he had written. He was thinking of how warm her skin felt and how the fading light still made her hair look shiny.

"The song, 'My Window'," She looked at him, her eyes wet and shining with tears. She swallowed hard.

Craig thought about it. No one had really asked him that sort of question before the CD came out but he heard it more and more. Magazine and T.V. reporters asked it, fans asked it. Even Joey had asked him once. He closed his eyes. He didn't really know. It had to do with his mood and an energy level for the writing, which he thought of as some tube filled up with the energy like ink, like mercury in the old thermometers. If that energy wasn't there he couldn't do it. He knew he wrote that song soon after Ashley left for England.

"It's hard to explain how," he said, and she nodded. She stopped crying and pulled away from him slowly, hugged herself, her shoulders up. Craig recognized that body posture, all guarding and closed off and it screamed, 'leave me alone!' He knew about that. She smiled at him, just a little hint of a smile, but her body posture didn't change.

"Can I walk you home?" he said, watching her shiver a little as the temperature dropped. He didn't want to bring her home but sensed it would be better. He didn't want to push her.

"Yeah. Sure," she said, sounding distracted, looking away. The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face and she brushed it away with a quick flick of her hand. They walked, not saying much. The sky went from dark blue to black in that imperceptible way. Streetlights and house lights flickered to life around them.

"Don't think I'm a freak," she said to him as they got near her house.

"No, I love when girls cry hysterically on a first date. It makes it more exciting," he said, his tone light and joking, but he cringed a little, remembering how Ashley always took the joking. But Darcy smiled and laughed, and for a second she let her arms fall to her sides before hugging herself again.

"Uh, can I see you again?" he said, and she looked at him, her eyes widening.

"Really? You actually want to see me again?" Head down, eyes up, and this haunted look in her eyes made Craig feel protective of her.

"Yeah. Really," he said, his voice low. He looked right into her eyes and she looked back for a few seconds and then turned away.

"Okay," she said, and reached for a pen in her pocket. She took his hand and turned it palm up and wrote her phone number on his palm. He could feel the pen almost tickling as she wrote the numbers.

"You can call me," she said, putting the pen in her pocket.

"I will," he said.

He watched her close the door and he turned away, walked to the hotel he was staying in for the next couple of nights. She was so troubled, so damaged. He knew enough to go slow. He had a hotel room. She could have come back with him. But she wasn't up to that. He saw it in her eyes, in every movement.

Darcy leaned against the closed door, closed her eyes. He probably thought she was so stupid, crying like that. What had she been thinking? He didn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't call. She slid down until she was sitting on the floor and she buried her face in her hands.

Craig Manning. She barely remembered him from when he had gone to Degrassi. She thought he might have played with his band at the car wash in grade 10. She'd hardly seen him, and he hadn't mattered to her. He was just one of Spinner's ex-friends at that time, and she'd been whole. Intact. She had God and her virginity and everything was right. Now, she was cracked. She was broken. Craig hadn't mattered to her until she heard that song. He hadn't mattered until that song got her through some endless grinding nights.


	4. Chapter 4

Darcy woke up slowly, and for a second she forgets it all. In that first waking second it seems that things are okay. Then it comes back to her, and she feels the impurity laying on her like a film of dirt.

Downstairs she watches her sister scramble eggs and fry bacon, her long pajama dress floating around her, the ponytails messy from sleep.

"Want some?" her sister asked her, tilting the pan of scrambled eggs toward her. Darcy shook her head, sipped her little glass of juice. Her sister eyed her jutting collar bones and bony wrists, knobby knees.

"Darcy, I weigh more than you do," she pointed out, and Darcy sipped more juice.

"I'm just not hungry when I first wake up," she said, but the truth was she wasn't hungry anymore. Ever. The less space she takes up the better. She doesn't deserve the space.

The phone rang and her sister turned off the burners and ran to answer it.

"Hello?…yeah, she's here…who's calling?…hold on,"

She handed the phone to Darcy, covering the mouthpiece, whispered, "it's Craig," Darcy felt her heart speed up, felt her breath quicken, felt stupid and happy. She took the phone. Her sister mouthed, "who's Craig?" Darcy picked up the CD and pointed to Craig's grade 11 picture. He looked at both girls from underneath his spiky bangs, and the black leather coat made him look cool, kind of 50's. Her sister widened her eyes and her mouth dropped open. Then she scraped her scrambled eggs onto a plate and laid the bacon strips next to them.

"Hi," Darcy said, feeling shy.

"Hi, it's me. Uh, want to do something today?" he said, and she closed her eyes. She liked his voice.

"Yeah," she said quick, and then doubted herself. Should she be hanging out with Craig Manning? With anyone who was, well, male? It didn't matter what songs they wrote, men all had the potential to be violent and violating. Men sucked. But she liked him despite fearing things.

She hung up the phone and watched her sister eat her eggs. She pushed her glasses up her nose and set her fork down, chewed her last bite.

"You're going out with Craig Manning? The guy on the CD?"

"Yeah, but he used to live here. He went to Degrassi. It's not like he's some random rock star,"

Her sister shrugged, picked up the CD and gazed at Craig's picture while she ate her bacon. Darcy wished she wouldn't touch it with her greasy fingers but she didn't say anything. She took her last sip of juice and set the glass in the sink. She went to take a shower, turning the water to as hot as she could stand it, but she still didn't feel clean.

She let her sister answer the door when he knocked, knowing she'd like to be the one to let him in. She liked to be star struck.

"Craig Manning?" she said in awe, and Craig ducked his head and smiled, said yeah.

"Oh my god, come in," her sister said, taking his hand and dragging him inside. Darcy fixed her hair upstairs but she could hear them. Heard all the questions her sister asked him and heard his answers. Questions about touring and recording songs and making videos. Darcy smiled as she grilled him.

"Can you play a song? Please? We have a guitar," Before he could answer Darcy heard her run off to get the guitar. She smiled. Her sister was relentless. She heard her come back with the guitar, could even hear it banging against her knees as she walked with it. She knew he would play something for her, she just hoped it wouldn't be 'My Window'.

He played 'Everything's Dust' a song Darcy had never heard, but she liked it. Liked the naked note of apology in it, liked how his songs were honest and slightly unpolished. She put her brush down on the top of her dresser, watched her mirror image let go of the brush and turn toward the door as the last notes of the song drifted up to her.

Going down the stairs, she heard her sister clapping and heard her ask for another song. She had to put a stop to her relentlessness.

"No," Darcy said, smiling at her sister and looking sideways at Craig, "he gets paid for this. It's not fair to ask him to sing and play songs for free," She pouted and looked pleadingly at Craig, but he shrugged.

"It's just economics, kid. Sorry,"

They left, and Craig laughed about her sister.

"She's great," he said, "I have a little sister, too,"

Darcy walked beside him, feeling the wind brush her face like a soft hand. The sun was bright, and twinkled on the water beside the sidewalk, the vast lake. She could smell the salt. She didn't mind going with him, not knowing where they were going. She'd missed nice surprises.

They went to a restaurant that had an outside terrace with umbrellas sticking out of the tables.

"Brunch," he told her, and she thought about how he always brought her to places where there was food. And she'd eat today, she promised herself. At least a little.


	5. Chapter 5

He watched her eat. She picked at the food. He remembered when he had no appetite just like that, when his father's anger hung over everything he did, and he couldn't eat. He wondered what had happened to her, why she was so sad, why she hugged herself all the time. He chewed the bacon and the eggs and watched her, and wondered.

He didn't really remember her from when he went to Degrassi. He was too caught up in Ashley, too caught up in blaming Spinner for everything. He knew he was seeing some religious girl, and he did have to admit he thought she was kinda cute. But Ashley was devastating. And that was when the bipolar was, like Joey would say, "acting up,"

Things were better now, his music career humming along, his cocaine addiction behind him. He felt more at peace with himself, with things that had happened to him, things he had done. He remembered being at Ashley's house that night she was leaving for the airport, and pleading with her that he was better now. She hadn't believed him and she was right not to. He hadn't been better. But now he was.

He wouldn't ask Darcy what was wrong, although something obviously was. He hadn't liked it when people asked him that, when all the words for what was wrong had too many angles to come out of his mouth. Maybe she'd tell him if she trusted him enough.

She chewed on a strip of bacon, wiped her mouth with the napkin. Smiled at him.

"I like this," she said, and then looked down. He saw the embarrassed look fill her eyes.

"Hey," he said, his tone making her look up at him, "I like this, too,"

He didn't know what it was, she was so closed up in herself, but he could sense there was something worth knowing if he could get beyond that. He knew that's how it was with him, in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. He knew he had all those walls up and that most people just didn't bother to get beyond them.

The waitress came and cleared their plates away, and set the bill down on his side of the table. Darcy kind of laughed at that.

"Well, they're right," she said, "you have more money,"

"Do you think I'd let you pay?" he said.

"What are we going to do now?" she said, and he noticed that when she smiled it touched her eyes.

"Uh, well, I have to record a couple of songs…"

Crestfallen look, and it made him almost happy. They walked alongside the glass office buildings and the lake, the sun sparkling on each, reflecting the bright flashes into their eyes.

"Listen, you could come with me, if you want to," he said, peering at her. The slow smile, the brightening light in her eyes, and she looked right into his eyes.

"Yeah, I'd like to," she said.

They headed toward the studio, the same one where Downtown Sasquatch had recorded the demo and he had walked out, ran out after Ashley.

They went inside and she looked around in awe.

"This is it?" she said. She looked at the glass booth, the wall of recording equipment, the instruments lining the walls.

"Yeah," he said, smiling, "this is where the magic happens,"


	6. Chapter 6

It was this glassed in, sound proofed booth, and Darcy sat outside of it with all the equipment and the guy who looked like a younger Ozzie Osbourne running the gadgets. His eyes were obscured behind his blue tinted John Lennon glasses. Darcy sat on her hands and rocked forward.

She noticed the old wallpaper, it looked like the wallpaper in the hundred year old house she used to live in. She noticed the ear phones Craig wore and the way he held the microphone. The first song he played she'd never heard, and it was okay. She liked watching him sing, watching his adam's apple move. Sometimes he would close his eyes.

The guy running the controls hadn't looked at her, hadn't acknowledged her presence and that was just fine with her. She looked at Craig through the glass and listened to the songs she'd never heard before.

Craig was focused. The booth, the studio, Darcy watching him, the tour, everything faded as he performed the song. Playing music was his drug, that was what really got him off of cocaine. He was an addictive personality, he knew that. He accepted that now. He could just as easily lose himself in heroin or cocaine or crystal meth as he could with music and writing and photography. It was choices, that was all.

Darcy blinked, listened as he started to play a slower and sadder song than the previous one. The melody and the words pulled her along and she got it, she understood these melancholy songs in a way she never had before. She stared at Craig, wondering how it was he could write the words that described her secret pain. How did he know?

It was done. The sound guy, the Ozzie Osbourne guy, looked over his glasses and said good job. Craig took the ear phones off and looked around like he didn't know where he was for a second. Darcy watched him, licked her lips.

He came out of the booth, talked to the sound guy for a bit. Darcy listened.

"So, how long will you be in Toronto?" he said, looking up at Craig.

"A few more days," he said, and Darcy took a deep breath. A few more days. That was it. That wasn't very long. She'd have to give him up. She knew that, knew she had no real claims on him, knew he had a rock star life that was begging for him to return.

"Wow," Darcy said as they walked out, and Craig laughed.

"It's just, you seemed so professional in there," she said, and she thought about how he was professional about it, that it was his job. She felt inferior to him in this way. She was aimless. She had no aspirations toward any profession, she could barely get through the day. She couldn't pay attention in school, she couldn't sleep at night without nightmares, she couldn't hear footsteps behind her without tensing up.

"Yeah, well. You should have seen the first time we tried to record something," he said, and told her about the band contest he'd won in 10th grade, and running after Ashley, leaving Spinner and Marco to mangle his song beyond recognition. She laughed.

They stopped for coffee at one of the sidewalk cafes, and Darcy ordered a nonfat latte, no whip. Craig glanced at her little diet coffee and ordered a huge coffee with whip cream and sugar encrusted around the rim.

"That's like a diabetic coma in a cup," Darcy said, and he smiled, dipped his lips into the whip cream.

"You only live once. If you get hit by a bus when we leave here your last coffee would have been all low fat, no whip cream. That's sad. It's just sad,"

She sipped, and looked out over the street and the buildings and the clear blue sky beyond. Glanced at him. She'd liked being with him but was conscious of his time here ticking down.

"Where are you going when you leave here?" she said, "I mean, when you leave Toronto,"

"Vancouver," he said, and she tried not to let the disappointment show on her face. She sipped her coffee and nodded.

"Oh," she said. Figures. She finds someone who can almost coax her out of her shell and he's leaving, going all the way across the country.


End file.
